


ollphéist

by cloudtalking



Series: the raven’s court [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Horror, Murder, Violence, back at it again w the fae aus, mess w magic u get fucked, prolly gonna be a series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 23:50:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13868637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudtalking/pseuds/cloudtalking
Summary: ronan lynch is the child of a dream and a dreamer. between the two of them, they didn't have any humanity to spare.





	ollphéist

**Author's Note:**

> ronan lynch  
> 1\. cannot lie  
> 2\. is irish  
> 3\. is magic  
> 4\. takes deals v seriously
> 
> hmmmm wonder what else fits all of these categories???? oh I know!!
> 
> fae

  
it was a summer’s day, or it was at the barns. it could have been storming, the streets flooded, the world set aflame, and it would still have been summer within the property lines of the barns.

the air was a sticky soup known only to Virginia summers, accompanied by a sun shining brighter than anywhere else in the world. good for little boys like declan who want nothing more than to jump around in the sprinklers outside. bad for mothers like aurora whose blue eyes disagree with the brightness of their estates.

niall crouches down close to his son’s level, distracting the boy from his mission to badger aurora until she agreed to take him outside.

“your mother can’t play today,” niall says. “even flowers sometimes need more time to bloom than others. she’s just having a hard time opening up to the sun today.”

“oh.” declan frowns. “that makes sense.”

“don’t look so glum,” niall grins at him. “you seem plenty ready to bloom, if in need of a good watering. let’s go into the backyard, shall we?”

declan jumps at the suggestion, grabbing his father’s hand and dragging him out the door. niall throws a grin at his wife as he leaves.

she smiles back in gratitude, disappearing inside as her boys move farther and farther away from the farmhouse.

niall comes back with declan soaked beyond belief, smiling so hard new dimples are discovered on his freckles cheeks. declan makes sure to keep an arms length away so niall can’t pinch them like the old adoring monster he his.

aurora appears in the doorway before either of them can reach the house, cradling something unknown in her arms.

niall slows in his attempt to get a better look at it, climbing up the hill to his doorstep at a snail's pace.

declan, a tornado of swirling energy at five years old, is simply unable to wait that long. he sprints to his mother, shaking off excess water as he goes. she leans down to his height, allowing him to see the bundle she holds close to her chest.

niall can’t see what causes it, still too far away to get a good look, but he can see his son freeze in place. he runs back to niall as if the devil is nipping at his heels, clutching at his pant leg. he’s shaking.

slowly but surely, niall scales the hill, meeting his wife at the top. she’s cradling a monster in her arms, a mass of feathers and teeth and claws. it can’t seem to decide what to define itself as, changing colors and shapes every time niall blinks.

“aurora,” niall says good-naturedly. “what is that?”

  
“he’s ours,” she says, voice sweet as honey as she rocks the atrocity back and forth in her arms. “our beautiful baby boy.”

declan hugs niall’s leg tighter, moving behind it as if his father could hide him from the monster. niall almost wishes he could hide as well, but he doesn’t dare show weakness. he’s certain it could smell the fear rolling off of him anyway.

dream things are always something else before they become niall’s dreams, always something more than what niall makes of them. they drifted in the cosmos as entirely different magicks, before niall called on them, only bending to niall’s will because they wished to.

whatever niall had made aurora from had been a new material, alive with unfamiliar energies. it was brightly colored and beautiful, clearly toxic. he wanted it more than anything in the world, but it was clear that it wanted him first.

he shaped it into aurora, but she was more than what he made of her. now more than ever he can see the evidence of her origins, smiling down at the atrocity in her arms with needle-sharp teeth. if niall makes a wrong move now, it is clear she will break him.

niall did not get as far as he had into the world of magic by being afraid. magic weeded out the weak like nothing else ever could. you were either strong, or you were eaten alive, devoured by the black hole in reality that called itself power.

the strong never came out of an encounter with magic completely sane.

niall inches closer, smiling down at the amalgamation of nightmares. it has hundreds of eyes and all of them are niall’s.

  
“he’s beautiful,” niall says honestly, taking him when aurora hands him over.

declan draws away from him as well, whimpering. neither of his parents heed him any mind, absorbed in their adoration of the creature in niall’s arms.

he has nightmares for weeks. they never truly go away.

..

the boy (labeled as such because aurora said he told her he was, though declan isn’t quite sure he even has a mouth) fits nicely in the lynch household. they had always been a family of monsters, it was about time that one of them looked the part. he has a high chair by the dining room table dreamed to adapt and fit whatever form he decides to take while he’s in it. he has his own room decorated in claw marks and finger paintings. he has his own toys, none of them from the waking world.

sometimes the monster has hands, whether they resemble a human’s or not. those days he can play any games declan wants, perfect company for days that niall and aurora require time alone.

often the monster has spines, has talons, has claws. declan is more likely to trip and cut himself on his brother than he is to play a successful game of catch.

declan finds that he only likes his brother when he’s human. when his skin is soft and pink instead of feathery, when his teeth aren’t sharp as a shark’s and hitting out of his mouth.

the boy walks into breakfast the next day as a younger version of niall— if niall at age four had black feathers in his hair and teeth that looked like needles and three fingers on each hand that tapered into talons.

“you’re getting closer,” niall praises. The boy lets out a shrill bird-like noise and preens under the attention.

  
aurora picks him up and spins him around . “you’re beautiful,” she tells him. “just like your father.”

he croons, kicking his legs happily. then his shoe falls off to show a hoof.

  
“we’ll work on it,” niall continues after a beat. the happy trill he receives is almost deafening

..

sometimes, niall’s son has wings where his arms should be, horns where his hair should be, claws where his hands should be. for the most part, however, he is looking more and more like a lynch every day. he is learning how to cover his nightmarish qualities, to hide them deep inside as humans do.

this, niall knows, is not to be taken as a sign of submission. aurora listens to niall because she wants to, because she fell for him long before she allowed him to dream her.

his son did not choose niall as a master. niall has no real power over him. he isn’t quite sure that anyone does. he stays sharp, teaching his son about the wonders of magic and life and always watching out for the time to come where he will use it against him.

declan, unused to supernatural dealings, loses his fear. he starts acting high and mighty, starts treating his brother like a kid to steal candy from, takes his toy and doesn’t let him have it back.

  
aurora walks in on him crying, every inch of exposed skin littered with bites and scratches that bubble like acid. aurora cleans the wounds and scolds him for being so careless as to play with fire.

the cuts scab over and then scar. the youngest lynch brother isn’t even a little bit sorry.

..

when declan is ten years old he brings a friend home from school. his name is charles deaton and his father runs a big banking corporation in the north. he has blonde hair and brown eyes and tan skin— not at all a lynch.

he plays with him all day long; hide and seek in the forest, tag in the cornfields, tackle football in the backyard. he doesn’t see his brother at all.

charles goes missing the next day, sending the town into a panic. they all suspect a kidnapping, the elite of Henrietta and its surrounding areas keeping their children on a tight leash as the police continue to have no real leads.

charles turns up a day or so later, when declan’s brother vomits up bones on the kitchen floor.

declan runs to his room and doesn’t talk to his brother for months.  
..

the barns are heavy with tension, ozone sparking in the air, lightning preparing to strike. it will only be so long until someone gets burned by it.

niall encourages the brothers to make up, to put the past behind them and let the charles deaton incident become water under the bridge.

neither brother seems ready to let go of a grudge. they are filled with irish pride and violence, ready for a fight if it comes down to it.

declan is openly hostile towards all of them, accusing his entire family of being murderers. he says that they are housing a criminal. niall tells him that if that is true that he should go to the police. declan locks himself in his room instead.

the monster turns himself into a storm cloud, thundering and angry and alone. he doesn’t come down for meals, mainly because declan does. niall wonders if he even needs to eat.

he does need to sleep, however. that much is proven by what comes out of his dreams.

“ronan!” matthew exclaims, allowing the now raven-centipede hybrid to climb all over him, shrieking in contentment.

the monster dreamed up his own brother, one that will never pick the son of a banker over him. one that knows his name.

niall opens his arms wide, readily accepting his new son and his old one’s new title. matthew gets his own room, though he more often chooses to sleep in ronan’s. it is not as if ronan often uses his own, preferring to sleep as something closer to the feathery mass of his beginnings.

niall knows to let sleeping dragons lie. being a dreamer means adapting to every change, never acting too violently towards those likely to fight back. declan never quite learns this lesson.

..

ronan and declan can hold grudges for forever, but they cannot stop being brothers over something so trivial as anyone not a lynch. they start talking again, but ronan has his own playmate now, no longer needing declan to spend every waking moment with him.

instead, declan is allowed to join the rugby team and the student council. he’s allowed to go to other people’s houses after school and go on dates. it’s bittersweet freedom, but it’s well worth the bitter taste of nostalgia if it means he doesn’t have to fear the death of anyone he looks at that isn’t approved by ronan.

declan talks about school and all the friends he makes at breakfast, glad to brag about his life when aurora asks. ronan lets out a hiss when he starts talking about a girl he might like to date. although declan’s leash has been extended, he is still a lynch, meaning he belongs to ronan and ronan alone.

“if you go to school you can have friends too,” declan points out, lifting a forkful of black pudding in ronan’s general direction. “you would have to learn english and look like a human every day, but it could work.”

  
this gives ronan pause. _friend_ is not a word in his native language, whatever that may be. it always translates wrong, seeming more like _threat_ or _nuisance_. however if it means something like _king, queen, court_ , he might want to try it out.

school is not very fruitful, the children far more fearful of ronan than even declan has ever been. ronan had gone through so much effort to look like them, to erase all the interesting parts of himself and match his words to theirs. his efforts seem to be in vain; humans well aware of a stranger in their midsts.

declan says it’s because ronan came into school without washing off the blood on his hands.

aurora frowns at them both for arguing and then reminds ronan that messy eaters need to clean up after themselves.

..

there’s a rule at the barns: DO NOT BRING ANYONE FROM THE OUTSIDE IN.

declan always makes excuses for why he can’t bring anyone home. they are getting less believable over time, especially as he reaches an age that parents being away for work is more of an encouragement than not. luckily, declan is growing to be a very skilled liar.

matthew and ronan do not very much care about the rule, the latter being the reason for its instatment. they can find all the company they might need inside the property lines of the barns. outsiders are much too boring, are much too fragile, are much too scared to ever play with.

that rule breaks ronan’s freshman year.

“my name is richard campbell gansey III,” says the absolute most presumptuous person ronan has ever laid his eyes on. he holds out his hand for ronan to shake, an action that is promptly ignored.

“dick,” ronan shortens, sliding into the seat next to him.

“call me gansey,” said boy winces. “dick is my father.”

“mine too,” ronan snorts.

gansey’s further protests of how he most certainly did not mean it in such a crass way only served to dig him a deeper hole. ronan can tell when people lie.

..

gansey translates to king. ronan joins his court as fast as possible, wanting to be part of something strange and new.

“what do you know of dead welsh kings?” gansey asks.

  
_ravensdeathmagickingbetrayalwar_

  
“nothing,” ronan replies.

he brings gansey home that day. the look on declan’s face at that continues to bring joy to him for years to come.

**Author's Note:**

> first trc fic!!! I’m making this into a series and it prolly won’t be updated soon bc I’m working on the tfc Big Bang rn but like update frequency depends on reception so if y’all want it lots it’ll prolly be up faster.
> 
> scream at me on @twnyards on the hellsite


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